7/8 Electives ROCK!

Here's a look at some of third quarter's Advanced Ceramics!

The seventh and eighth graders at Fairview have a great start to their school day--ELECTIVES!

A little background...each June the sixth and seventh graders fill out elective surveys making tiered choices for their art and music classes for the following school year. The art options are currently: Art Foundations, which is a little bit of every-art-thing; Drawing and Painting, an obviously two dimensional course where students fine tune drawing what the see and painting what they feel; Art 3D, which is all about sculpture-relief in the round and assemblage using many mediums; Advanced Ceramics, open to those who have taken either Art 3d or Art Foundations and really love clay; Cartooning, where the students develop personal characters and dabble in animation; and/or Photography, where we explore composition, lighting, point of view and the digital world with Adobe Photoshop.

Students can take up to three quarters of Art per year. In addition to class assignments all middle school students need to complete an Artist Investigation for each quarterly class. Their Investigations are very open ended. Students choose their artist based on course subject, they research an artist's profile and come up with three questions to explore. They use at least three sources to begin their research and check for their answers. Then they create an inspiration artwork based on the artists' style, palette, technique or subject matter. Students choose how they present their investigations during the last few weeks of class in PowerPoint or poster formats with a speech or written report. I learn so much from them during their presentations!

Thanks for all of your great efforts!